I am a poet and visual artist who spent many years moonlighting as a philosophy professor — most often in interdisciplinary settings, most recently at the University of Chicago Graham School. I studied at the University of Chicago (where I received my Ph.D. in Ethics and Society in 1982) and Valparaiso University (where I received my B.A. in Psychology in 1974).

I grew up on the High Plains in the Texas Panhandle, and that is where I first learned to take nothing seriously. Emptiness plays an important role in both my poetry and my painting: I often find myself spending as much time on what is not there as on what is. This usually means focusing on a single image and letting the whole composition spring up around it — not a narrative but an all at once that evokes a here and now that is, here, now, neither. A likely story is likely to grow out of this when readers and viewers encounter it, but I hope my art always invites more than it contains.